GHOUL
by Anticipating Boxes
Summary: Over the course of four years girls have been turning up dead. There is no obvious connection. Now, as the Winchesters investigate a shocking possibility comes to light. And meanwhile in the town of Meadow Creek, Shilo knows that it's happening again...
1. Chapter 1

**Notes**: I sort of want to claim insanity on this one, but I just don't think that's going to fly.

As far as I know this is the first Repo/Supernatural crossover on this site, but I'm pretty sure you can read this story only having seen one or the other. All you really need to know is that no, the Graverobber never had an 'actual' name.

You get two chapts to start. After that it updates weekly.

* * *

[**Four Years Ago**]

The girl was only twelve years old at most, pale and thin, dark shadows smudged under her eyes. She was dressed in a white nightgown, old fashioned, lace trimming the high neck. She stared at him sombrely from the rose-covered archway of the window, a plush rabbit dangling from one of her tiny pale hands.

He stared back for several long moments, waiting for a scream that never came. Eventually he straightened, drawing back up to his full height - he didn't try to hide the arm that he was carrying, it was a little too late for that. "Aren't you a little young to be up this late?" he asked, playing it as cool as possible considering the circumstances.

"Aren't you a little dead to be walking around?" she retorted, and despite sounding exhausted there was still a bite to her tone.

"Touché. Nice call, kid."

"I'm not a kid."

"You look like a kid."

The girl shrugged. She hugged the plush rabbit to her chest and leaned against the window frame listlessly. She was silent for so long that he was beginning to think he should just get going and leave her to it - as long as she didn't scream and draw attention to him directly nobody would believe her if she talked. He was just about to disappear into the night when she spoke again. "What's it like when you die?"

"I wouldn't know," he admitted. "Never have personally."

"But you look dead," she protested quietly, not looking at him. "You look like a zombie. How can you look like that and not be dead?"

"I was born like this."

"So you're not human."

He shook his head. "Not even close."

"Oh." She sighed. "I just thought you could tell me what it's going to be like when I die."

"Sort of a morbid subject for a kid your age." He held a hand up when she glared at him, dirt-smeared palm turned towards her. "Hey, I'm a grave robber, kid. I only know what happens to you when you're already dead."

"What happens then?" she asked, dark eyes flicking to the still-pinkish arm held loosely in the grave robber's grasp.

"You rot. Your spirit dissipates, goes where it's going - or it stays behind, gets a little insane as the years roll on. And sometimes you become a tasty snack for things like me." He held up the arm, then slung it over one shoulder so it balanced there, forearm dangling down against his chest, upper arm against his back. "So why does a girl like you want to know?"

The girl looked away again, then back up at his face. "My dad is going to kill me."

-

* * *

-

[**Now**]

"Here's one. Listen to this..."

Dean looked up from his hardcopy paper to listen to Sam read from the screen of his laptop, frowning thoughtfully. They were looking for jobs, like always, and so far hadn't come up with anything too pressing within a day or two's drive. Dean almost felt perversely disappointed that there was nothing that seemed to need killing. And guilty enough about that to sit still and listen while Sam spoke.

"Two twelve year old girls dead within the last two weeks, each one found in their beds in a coma that lasted for two days before they died. The hospital is refusing comment, which means they probably don't know what's wrong." Sam spun the screen to show Dean a set of pictures. "And look at this. This is two different girls, Dean."

"They look almost exactly alike."

"Not exactly, but close. They both had long dark hair and brown eyes, pale skin."

"Any markings on the bodies?"

"I pulled the autopsy reports," Sam replied, shaking his head. "There's nothing. No chemicals, no bruising, nothing to indicate how they could have died. Aside from being dead... they're perfectly healthy."

"Looks like we have a case."

"Shepherd Bridge," Sam recited, shutting his laptop. "About five hours drive from here."

Dean dug out a few bills from his pocket to settle the cost of breakfast and caffeine. He dumped the lot in the middle of the table and slid from the booth. "I'll make it four."

-

* * *

-

Meadow Creek was pristine. It was a nice town filled with nice people who all lived in very nice houses. Shilo felt horribly out of place there. It was only her first week in this particular town and already she could tell that it wasn't a good fit. For one thing the school she was expected to attend was a Christian college, complete with nuns and daily mass. For another, her new foster mother had a rule about open windows.

This was the third foster home Shilo had been moved to in just two years. It was also the third full medical check up in just two years.

Shilo had come to view these visits, these homes, as wholly temporary nuisances. Just more bumps along an already bumpy road and something she'd be glad to be rid of once she turned eighteen. For now, at sixteen, she was forced to endure the constant monitoring of her supposed conditions.

"Alright," Doctor Strauss, a kindly, balding type with large thick glasses and a moustache that could win prizes, smiled at Shilo. "I think we're just about done here. I'll just need to take a small blood sample just to make sure everything is working the way it should be."

Shilo smiled back. A blandly sweet, insincere expression. She already knew her white blood cell count would be perfectly normal. It always was. It had been for four years now. "You're in luck," Shilo said, holding out her arm for the tourniquet. "I'm an easy stick."

The needle pinched as it went in, just like always. Shilo was so used to the process that she could watch as Dr. Strauss drew just one vial of blood before withdrawing the needle and pressing a cotton ball to the site. Shilo waited for the tape, then curled her arm in to help keep the pressure on the cotton. She'd have a small bruise later. She always did.

Dr. Strauss nodded to her. "Very good, very good. Alright, Shilo. I think that's everything we needed to do."

"Is the prognosis good?" Shilo asked, sounding genuine despite how sarcastic she felt about the question.

"Just between you and me I'd say you're looking in the pink of health, but we'll just wait and see what the blood work says, hm?"

Shilo nodded. She retrieved her school bag from the floor and stood. "Can I go?" she asked, "I should really be doing my homework."

"Is Carol picking you up?"

"She said I could walk. It's only five minutes." Shilo had a sneaking suspicion that the proximity to the doctor's surgery was one of the deciding factors in her newest temporary fact that Carol Wilson - Shilo's foster mother - had experience looking after chronically ill foster-kids was probably also a factor.

Dr. Strauss gave her a suspicious look that she countered with her sweetest, most genuine smile. He caved after only two seconds, and offered her a cheap strawberry lollipop to boot. "Oh, alright. Off you go then."

"Thankyou."

She was half way out the door when the doctor added; "Now don't forget, we have another appointment in two weeks."

Shilo suppressed a small sigh in favour of another smile. "I wont forget. Thankyou, Doctor Strauss."

Every single part of Meadow's Creek that Shilo had seen looked like something from a 1950s tv show. The architecture was all clean American lines, each building complimenting the next to create a perfect cookie-cutter town. The grass was all green, the lawns all neatly trimmed. She had yet to see a gardening company van hanging around anywhere, but she was sure it was only a matter of time.

The house Shilo was now being forced to live in was painted a light peachy pink. It was two storeys of good old fashioned homeliness. The only thing she liked about it was the rose trellis on one side of the house, the one that came up to just below her bedroom window. It also helped that just behind the back yard was a smattering of trees and open ground that cleared out into a small park. Beyond that was the forest that bordered part of the town itself.

The other side of town was all farmland. Shilo preferred the trees.

It was almost dark by the time she got home. Winter meant early nights, which was all the better for her. Shilo had always preferred night time to day, and not just because it was quieter.

She played at being the good little girl and did her homework downstairs in the living room with the other two girls living in the house, then ate dinner at the table with everyone else and answered questions about her first week at school. She escaped upstairs to her room at the first opportunity and sat by the window.

Shilo got what she was waiting for only a half hour later. A flash of light bouncing off a mirror, disturbing the local population of bats. That meant he was here, and she would leave the window unlocked tonight.

It was close to midnight when she woke, drawn from sleep by the sudden chill of a winter breeze. Shilo sat up and looked towards the window, not in the least bit surprised to see the shaggy silhouette framed by the moonlight. She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and slid off the bed. "I didn't know when you were going to get here. You took longer than usual."

The Graverobber shrugged, the long fur on his coat rippling in the breeze. "I had to scope the place first. This little town isn't very grave robber-friendly."

"We wouldn't have this problem," Shilo pointed out, "if I could come and see you. Sneaking around at night is not optimal, someone could see you." She sat down on the window ledge, careful not to balance too precariously. One large greyish hand placed itself on the side of the window frame, the Graverobber's arm forming an extra barrier to help keep her inside. Shilo looked him straight in the eye. "Why can't I come see you during the daytime?"

"You know why," Graverobber replied easily. Somehow he was standing on the trellis, holding himself up with just a foothold and a hand against the window frame.

"I could come to you," Shilo pointed out, a tiny pale hand fluttering out into the night to touch the fur on his shoulder. It was plush, nearly a living entity in itself for all that it was just a coat. "In the graveyard. I know where you'd be living. I just have to pick the right tomb."

"Don't be stupid, Shy."

"Do you think I'm going to be freaked out by a couple of corpses? I see you all the time."

The Graverobber rolled his eyes, swinging out on the trellis until he was leaning against the wall with his back to her. "I'm not a corpse, kid. There's a big difference between me and a corpse. Corpses," he said, looking back over his shoulder with a grin, "don't save little girls from big bad ghosties."

"Then what you really mean," Shilo protested with a small sigh, "is you don't want me poking around in a graveyard you haven't picked through yet."

"Got it in one, Shy."

"That's stupid. There's only one ghost I have to worry about, and it's not going to stalk me through a graveyard that you're staying in."

"You're not visiting me. End of story, kid."

"Graverobber..."

One of his greyish hands reached back to take hers, fingers cool and smudged with dirt. Shilo leaned out of the window as he pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, leaving a reddish smear behind. "Be a good girl," he told her. "Just for now."


	2. Chapter 2

It took an entire week of poking around town before they finally realised that they had nothing. No leads, no possible causes. Just three dead girls and baffling medical records. They talked to coroners, to hospital staff, to two separate GPs, three sets of parents. Everyone said the same thing. The girls weren't friends, they didn't even go to the same schools or make regular visits to the same places.

Eventually they were stuck with just one lead, and it was a long shot. Which was how they found themselves here at the circulation desk of the Shepherd's Bridge public library.

Sam smiled at the elderly librarian as he showed her his fake federal ID. "We were hoping we could ask you a few questions, ma'am."

The librarian smiled at him. Just like plenty of other elderly women she was put at ease by his earnest face and sympathetic voice. "Of course," she said. "What can I do for you, officers?"

That was Dean's cue, and he pulled out a photo of the first girl. "Can you tell us if you recognise the girl in this photo?"

"Why, yes," the librarian said immediately. "I'd know that girl anywhere. That's Shilo Wallace, a bit younger mind you, but that face is unmistakeable."

The brothers exchanged looks, eyebrows raised.

The librarian continued, completely oblivious to their surprise; "Shilo used to come in here every day after school just like clockwork. She would sit down on the floor with that adorable little rabbit and read until five o'clock exactly, which is when Karen Marshall finished work - she was the girl's foster mother, you know. Shilo is an orphan, poor dear, a ward of the state. She hasn't been here in at least a month." The librarian clucked her tongue. "I suppose with Karen's pregnancy she must have decided that Shilo wasn't working out..."

"Ma'am," Sam interrupted, "could you tell us where we can find Karen Marshall?"

-

* * *

-

Karen Marshall was blonde, broad-shouldered, and nearly six feet tall. Only the feminine features of her face and the fact that she was obviously pregnant made it clear that she was female. She greeted the Winchesters with a polite smile and a slightly confused; "Can I help you?"

"We just wanted to ask you a few questions about a girl you fostered for a while earlier this year," Sam began as both he and Dean flashed their badges, "Shilo Wallace?"

Karen's smile turned into a small frown, but she let them in without a fuss. "Can I get you a coffee?" she asked, leading them to the kitchen, "tea?"

"Coffee would be great," Dean replied. He and Sam sat down at the kitchen table and within moments there were steaming hot cups of instant coffee sitting in front of them. They waited until Karen was seated before asking anything.

"Could you tell us if Shilo was a normal kind of girl?"

Karen hesitated. "Normal," she repeated. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Was she antisocial?" Sam asked. "Did she have any unusual habits?"

"Any strange books or other weird stuff that she was very secretive about?"

Karen sighed. "Shilo was a very quiet girl, very self contained. She spent a lot of time on her own, in her room or at the library. I wouldn't say she was antisocial..."

"But?" Sam prompted.

"She could be moody," Karen admitted, shaking her head, "but all teenagers are. With Shilo's condition it's easy to see why she might be moodier than most."

"Sorry, her condition?"

"Shilo has some kind of blood disease, I'm not sure of the name," Karen explained, sipping her coffee. "It's why we couldn't keep her. What with the baby and all, it would have been too much work. She needed regular doctor's appointments, and as I said it could make her moody. I always had the impression that she had trouble sleeping. She was much better than when she was younger though, or so I heard."

"What happened when she was younger?"

"I don't know this for sure. I never got to see much to do with her medical records, all of that was handled by her doctor, but her social worker did tell me some things. Shilo used to be hospitalised quite frequently as a child, sometimes she wouldn't be able to get out of bed for days at a time." Karen shook her head. "It was only very recently that she stopped needing such intensive treatment."

Sam looked at Dean, then back at Karen. "Could you give us the name of her social worker?"

"Sure. I think I still have her card somewhere..." Karen stood and made her way to a cork board by the fridge. After a small search she plucked a card from the mess of papers and handed it to Sam. "There you go."

"Thanks." Sam smiled, giving her his very best convincing look. "Do you mind if we take a look at the room she was staying in?"

As soon as they entered the room it was pretty clear that they weren't going to find anything. It looked like a guest room, no personality, nothing left behind. No oddities, no weird symbols scratched where they couldn't immediately be seen, no strange residues. There wasn't even a blip on the EMF.

"What do you think?" Dean asked, straightening up from where he'd been checking under the bed.

Sam shook his head, tucking the EMF metre back into his jacket. "Nothing. Looks like we wont find anything here."

"This Shilo chick is still our lead though, right?" Dean said, sounding a touch impatient. "Sudden miraculous recovery from a blood disease, girls that look like her dying off after visiting the same library she went to every day?"

"So lets go talk to her social worker," Sam frowned, taking out the card Karen had given him, "and see what Betty Alston knows about Shilo."

-

* * *

-

"Shilo?" Betty blinked, her greyish eyes enormous under a pair of wire-framed glasses. She flicked through the files on her desk until she finally turned up an overstuffed manila folder. "Here we are. This is Shilo's file." She thumbed through the first few papers before stopping on one particular document. "Yes, she was at the halfway house for a week before being moved on to Meadow Creek. Carol Wilson runs a girl's home there, she was nice enough to take Shilo in."

"Thanks, Mrs. Alston," Dean smiled at the social worker.

"Ms." Betty interrupted him, a light blush on her cheeks. "It's Ms., actually."

"Ms. Alston," Dean corrected himself, throwing in a grin for good measure. "Do you think we could get a copy of Shilo's file?"

Fifteen minutes later Dean was walking out of Ms. Betty Alston's office with a copy of Shilo's file and a smirk on his face thanks to the social worker's obvious flirting. Not his type, but the flirting was always an ego boost.

The brothers spread out the file across the table in their motel room, each of them taking a section to read through. The recent photo of Shilo was left in the middle of the table. A portrait, obviously a school photo, of a pale girl with dark hair and large brown eyes; She looked sweet, but if the Winchesters had learned anything it was that appearances could be deceiving.

"Listen to this," Sam said after a few minutes reading. "Shilo became a ward of the state after her father died under unusual circumstances. It doesn't say what happened exactly but Shilo was in the hospital at the time and almost as soon as he died she experienced a miraculous recovery. She was twelve at the time, the same age those other girls were."

"So maybe that was Shilo's first time doing whatever she's doing," Dean concluded, frowning. "I'm betting if we look back at all these places she's stayed there will be a whole lot of other dead girls."

Sam sighed. He put down the papers he was holding and pulled out his laptop instead. "I'm on it." He held out a hand for the list of locations. "If there are any weird deaths in these places I'll find them."

-

* * *

-

[**Four Years Ago**]

The house was quiet, the carport empty. Dr. Wallace was on call at the hospital, leaving his twelve year old daughter alone in the tightly locked house, confident that she would still be asleep when he got home.

Shilo was not asleep. She was sitting on the bed by her open window, bunny tucked under one arm, a glass of water in the other. Her bedside lamp was on, providing just enough light to colour the creature leaning against the other side of the windowsill.

The thing outside was clearly not human, though shaped enough like one that at a distance he could easily be mistaken for one. He was tall, pale enough to be greyish even in the light from the lamp, and his shoulders were made much broader than they actually were by the giant shaggy coat that he wore. His mouth was a splash of lavender in an otherwise colourless face, eyes two pits of darkness that bled red in the vague shape of circles where his pupils should be.

Neither the girl nor the creature seemed to find the other's presence discomfiting.

"I could actually go to school today," Shilo said.

"I told you," the Graverobber replied.

Shilo shook her head. She smiled, then sighed and leaned heavily against the window frame. "I'm tired."

The Graverobber reached out and brushed his fingers down through her hair. "I can't help you with that, Shy."

"You could... if you wanted to."

"Are you asking me to?"

"I don't know. I just... I don't want to die." Shilo slowly slipped from the window frame and onto the bed, the glass rescued from her hand by inhuman fingers just before she tipped it. "If I start dying for real, maybe you could help me then. I don't ever want to be a ghost."

The Graverobber smiled at her. He reached in through the window and pulled the blanket up over her, leaving smudges of dirt against the bedspread. "I'll help you when you need it."

"Promise, Graverobber?"

"Cross my heart."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes**: /sings the Nobody Cares song.

* * *

[**Now**]

"Shilo, it's time to get up, sweetie... Shilo!"

"Uhmph?" Shilo asked eloquently, her face still buried in her pillow.

Carol Wilson was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, a horrified expression on her face. "Shilo," she said again as the girl looked up, "what are you doing with the window open like that!?"

Shilo sat up. She blinked at Carol, then at the open window. "Oh! I'm sorry, Carol. I like sleeping with the window open."

"Well, we don't open windows at night time in this house," Carol replied, bustling over to shut the window. "I know you've only been here for a couple of weeks Shilo, but I thought we were leaving the adjustment period..."

Shilo pushed back the pink covers on her bed and tugged the hem of her cotton nightie back down over her thighs. "Carol, I'm sorry. It won't happen again. I have to get ready for school."

The teenager pushed Carol out of the room and shut the door firmly, exceptionally glad that the woman hadn't noticed the large, vague handprint painted in dirt right in the middle of the sill. Or, she looked down to the ground outside, the muddy tracks left by a pair of large, booted feet.

-

* * *

-

They got their first case in Meadow Creek almost the second they started investigating. Meadow Creek was a small town, the kind with only a few doctors and a tiny hospital that existed mostly for the maternity ward and for the scrapes and sicknesses of childhood. The second the Winchesters showed up, flashing their CDC badges and asking questions about unusual symptoms they were led straight to the nearly-empty children's ward and a baffled paediatrician.

"Up until recently she was a very healthy little girl," the paediatrician told them, looking harassed and sleep deprived. "I know the Wendells personally, Claire couldn't catch a cold if she was standing right in front of it. Now all of a sudden she can barely get out of bed."

Sam frowned. He had a nasty feeling that if they asked to see the girl she would look exactly like the other victims from the other towns.

"Do you have the results from her blood work?" Dean asked, a tiny hint of impatience seeping through as he realised that a hospital like this might not even have the facilities for in-depth blood work. Any delay could be fatal. Getting to town too late to stop someone else from dying would be like a slap to the face.

The doctor shook his head. "We're expecting the test results to come in today. Until we have them we won't know exactly what we're dealing with, she's presenting with an array of symptoms that could be linked to anything from meningitis to poisoning."

"The condition we're looking into is very specific," Sam said, "we've seen the results a few times before. Do you mind if we take a moment to talk to Claire, see how she's feeling?"

When the doctor began to look hesitant Dean was quick to jump in; "Any information we get from her could be vital to her survival. If she has what we think she has, she might not have long to live."

It was a cruel truth, and it made the doctor turn pale. Unfortunately, cruel truths were sometimes the only way to get things done. Just two minutes later Sam was easing into a chair next to Claire Wendell's hospital bed, about to try and ask the twelve year old girl if she'd been in contact with a sixteen year old witch lately.

The doctor was still hovering around nearby. Sam shot a glance at his brother and immediately Dean went to work, suggesting that the paediatrician show him what facilities the hospital had, just in case things got to the point where they had to improvise. Startled, and already spooked by Dean's earlier words, the doctor was quick to lead him away.

Sam waited until he couldn't hear their voices anymore before he turned his attention back to the girl.

Claire was already looking at him, a curious frown on her too-pale face. She looked exhausted, hair wilting, bags under her eyes, lips cracked. She looked like someone who had been sick for a long time, when from everything Sam knew already she wouldn't have been ill for more than a couple of days.

"Hi, Claire," Sam started, smiling at the girl. "My name is Sam. Can I ask you a couple of questions?"

Claire nodded. "Are you a doctor?"

"Not exactly, but I'm here to help. Now, this is going to sound strange, but have you seen anything weird in the past couple of days?"

"What kind of weird?" Claire asked, frowning at him.

"Strange shadows or shapes at night? Maybe something that looks like a doll turned up around your house?"

Claire shook her head.

"Ok." Sam paused a moment, then asked; "have you had any contact with a girl called Shilo Wallace? She would have moved here about a month ago..."

"Shilo? She's the new girl at my school." Claire was giving him an odd look, like she had no idea why he'd be asking such a weird question. "But I haven't spoken to her or anything. Why?"

"She might have had what you have when she was younger," Sam explained quickly. "Can you tell me anything about Shilo?"

"She's sort of weird." Claire shrugged. She leaned heavily on the pillows that were propping her up, as if it was too much effort to keep sitting up on her own. "I mean, she's a loner. She sits alone and she carries this toy rabbit in her bag with her, like she's still in second grade. That's all I really know about her."

"Have you ever spoken to her or had a class with her?"

"She's sixteen, I'm twelve. Look, just because there are only two schools in this whole town doesn't mean the teenagers want to hang around with kids." Claire sighed. She looked just about ready to pass out.

Sam hesitated, then decided that if talking just that much had tired her out he didn't want to be the cause of her inevitable fall into a coma. "Thanks, Claire," he said instead, "you've been really helpful."

-

* * *

-

"She goes to the same school," Sam told Dean as they walked back to the car. "She says Shilo's a loner, she always sits alone."

"That's classic antisocial witch behaviour. The hospital - if you can call it that - doesn't have two analysis machines to rub together. If Claire gets any worse they're going to ship her out to a big hospital a couple of hours away."

"That's some good news," Sam noted, though he couldn't help but wonder when 'good news' had gotten this bleak. "If she leaves town and gets better we'll know just how powerful Shilo is, and if the girls are only affected in a close proximity."

"We should also check out Claire's room. We might get lucky and find a hex bag or two."

Sam sighed. They'd need a bit of luck with this one. If it was as easy as burning a hex bag to send Claire down the road to recovery that would be very lucky indeed. Considering the physical similarities between the girls he suspected it wouldn't be that easy. "Check out the school too," Sam agreed. "And see how many other girls there are with features like Claire's."

-

* * *

-

Meadow Creek Christian College was a fairly large school all things considered. It combined both high school and middle school, its only competitors Sophie Everett Junior High and Meadow Creek High, both of which were on the other side of town. The buildings were old fashioned, only one storey, and spread out on a large block. The central building was the church and administration, and it was there that the Winchesters started their newest search.

It took a combination of official IDs, Sam's earnest face, and Dean's best sweet-talk to get them past the stern-looking nun behind the administration desk and into the principal's office. Even then it took a lot of fancy footwork to weasel their way onto a computer and granted access to student records. All they were allowed to see was the front page of each file listing name, age, and a list of classes being taken. Enrolment date was listed under a small digital photo of each student.

Private school, student ID.

For once beaurocracy was on their side.

Sam made sure not to linger on one photo too long while Dean scribbled the names of any potential victim into a small leather-bound notebook. After scrawling through every student in the junior school Sam finally looked up Shilo Wallace.  
There was no portrait yet, presumably because she had yet to sit for a photo, but the enrolment date was for exactly one week before Claire Wendell had begun to fall ill.

"What do you say we try and have a chat with the Wallace witch?" Dean suggested, quiet enough that the nearby nun wouldn't hear. "Scope her out and see if she lets anything slip."

Sam shut the last window on the computer screen and turned to the hovering nun with a smile. "Excuse me, ma'am. I was wondering if we could talk to a couple of Claire's friends. Ashley Green, Carmen Dougdale, Shilo Wallace..."

The nun pursed her lips, levelling a suspicious glare at the brothers. It was an expression that looked very natural on her face. Eventually she nodded. "You can speak to Ashley and Carmen now during their Physical Education class. You'll have to wait until after the lunch period to speak to Shilo."

-

* * *

-

Shilo was different in person than in theory. She dressed conservatively for a girl her age, wearing Mary Janes with her knee-length skirt and a high-collared, short sleeved white blouse under a plain black vest. Her hair was loose. She wore no makeup. Her backpack was worn, and a pair of forlorn-looking bunny ears poked out from one side, almost as if the rabbit had purposefully stuck them out there.

She looked vaguely surprised to be pulled aside in the middle of the school day to talk to a couple of CDC agents, but seemed to take the whole thing in stride.

"Shilo Wallace?" Sam asked, though he really didn't need to. If they'd had any doubt before that Shilo had something to do with the trails of deaths it was gone. She looked like Claire might have in a few years time, or like any of the other dead girls if they'd had the chance to grow up a little.

Shilo nodded, holding onto the strap of her bag a little tighter than before. "That's me," she confirmed, looking back and forth between Sam and Dean. "I'm not sure why you want to talk to me..."

"Do you know anything about Claire Wendell?" Dean asked, keeping a close and careful eye on the girl's body language. "The girl who's now lying sick in hospital with some mysterious illness?"

Shilo's hand clenched further on her backpack, knuckles turning white. "Claire," she said, "I don't know her. I mean, I know she's sick - everyone knows everything in this town."

"You didn't talk to her before she got sick?" Dean pressed. "You've never been to her house? Never spoken to her after school?"

"Charlotte, another girl in the foster home, is friends with her," Shilo offered, a tiny frown on her face that looked more like worry than confusion. "Maybe you should talk to her."

"How many other girls live in the foster home?" Sam asked.

"Just two. Why?"

"How many of them have dark hair like yours?" Dean interrupted.

Shilo looked startled, and for just a split second the surprise could have been mistaken for fear. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing," Sam said quickly. "Just don't worry about that. If it's alright do you mind if we ask you some questions about your own condition?"

"I'm not contagious," Shilo pointed out, looking very much like she wanted to be anywhere but here. "I would have thought someone from the CDC would know that."

"We know. Shilo... Actually, we just wanted to ask you how you were doing." Sam smiled at the girl, giving her his best reassuring, trustworthy look. "New school in a small town, and you said yourself that everyone knows everyone's business. Sometimes kids don't know that genetic disorders can't be contagious, sometimes they could be mean about it."

For some strange reason Shilo looked disgusted. "Does anyone even know what I had?" It was obviously a rhetorical question. Shilo backed away a step, her hand dropping from the strap of her bag. "I have to go to class."

She had turned on her heel and walked away before Sam could start to reply. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Dean.

"You have to admit," Dean pointed out, "that was pretty incriminating."

"She said 'had'," Sam agreed, "not 'have'."

"As in doesn't have anymore."

"Blood disorders don't just go away on their own."

"We need to check out that foster home."


	4. Chapter 4

The house was easy to find. For one thing it had a small sign out the front that said '_Carol Wilson's foster home for Girls'_. The main reason it was easy to find was the fact that the house was painted pink. Salmon pink, to be exact; The same shade as the roses growing on the trellis at the side of the house.

Carol Wilson just so happened to be at work, so with the impala parked two blocks down the Winchesters found themselves sneaking through the park and over the fence to the back door. The lock was barely any resistance at all and soon enough they found themselves in a large airy kitchen decorated in blue and white tiles.

No doubt what they were looking for wouldn't be on the ground floor, so the brothers quickly ascended the stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor. They started to do a quick search of each one but it became clear almost immediately which room belonged to Shilo.

Hers was the only room that was locked.

It took Dean barely ten seconds to open the lock. The inside of the room was painted pastel pink and furnished with bland girliness. The only spots of personality came from a framed and mounted bug collection hanging on one wall and a small stack of books on the plain white desk. Dean looked back at Sam and nodded.

The both of them took different sections of the room, methodically tearing it apart without actually showing that they'd been there, finding errant shoes, a couple of black and white photographs, and a lost piece of homework but nothing at all incriminating.

There was an old heart monitor and first aid kit stuffed under the bed that didn't look like it belonged to the girl. Also a dead cockroach.

It was only on closer examination of the contents of Shilo's desk that Sam realised they'd been missing something. "Dean."

"What?"

Sam held up the first book in the small stack. "_The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cannibalism in the Undead_?" He held up the next. "_Tales of Ghouls and Their Sources_?"

"Freaky chick." Dean shook his head. He leaned against the windowsill near the desk, and pure coincidence made him notice something odd on the outside of the frame. "Hey..." Dean pushed the window open and bent down to get a better look at the mark. "Does this look like a handprint to you?"

Sam leaned over to look. "That looks way too big to be from Shilo's hand. Dean, maybe we're looking at this the wrong way..."

"You think a ghoul," Dean grabbed the last book in the small stack - titled Cord of Blood - for emphasis, "is after Shilo and somehow infecting and killing girls that look like she used to?"

"I don't know. I know it sounds stupid. I just mean... She's obviously involved but she doesn't have any of the usual signs. We should have found something here. Something other than books on the undead."

"So maybe she's hiding her grimmorie or whatever at school?"

"In a Catholic school, Dean?"

"You've never seen The Craft, have you?"

"Look, let's just watch for a while until we know what's going on."

Dean sighed. He put the book back on the desk where it had been when they came in. "There had better be someplace to get coffee and donuts in this town."

-

* * *

-

The only viable place for a stakeout was in the woods that bordered the park. The car was too large and too obvious, which forced the brothers to camp out in the damp with nothing but a scratchy old blanket and a pair of binoculars dug from the impala trunk.

The stakeout was long and boring, the first few hours spent staring blankly at the back of the salmon pink house and the window that punched through into Shilo's room. The light turned on a seven, just after it began to get dark. a lack of curtains meant they could see straight into Shilo's room - or at least part of it - from their vantage point.

From what they could tell Shilo sat at the desk for a while before getting up to pace the length of the room a few times. She dumped her school bag onto the end of her bed and first ignored it, then later unpacked it and walked around with the rabbit tucked under one arm. She disappeared from view for a half hour and reappeared in a high-necked, lace-trimmed nightgown.

According to Sam's watch the bedroom light clicked off at exactly nine o'clock.

"Well this was boring," Dean muttered, more irritable than usual thanks to a rumbling stomach and the fact that the one source of food they'd thought to bring - a single chocolate bar - was long gone.

Sam shushed him with a quick hiss and the raise of his hand. Dean was about to ask what the hell he was on about when Sam pointed. There was movement along the tree line less than a hundred metres away. Dean shut up and peered through the binoculars at the disturbance.

At first nothing was immediately apparent, then he caught a flash of something bright, like a torchlight shone off a scrap of mirror. At the house a lamp turned on in Shilo's bedroom, just barely illuminating the outline of the window. Whatever was hiding amongst the trees stepped forward, and for just a moment Dean thought he was looking at a man. If that was a ghoul - and the jury was still out on that one - then it was much different from what he'd been expecting.

It wasn't like any ghoul they'd ever seen, not the ones who stole human shapes to blend in. This one was man-shaped, but the greyish colour of his skin would have made it difficult for him to fit in even if his eyes and mouth had been convincingly human in colour.

It crossed the open expanse of the park with a confidence that implied that it had done this plenty of times before, sparing only a quick glance left and right before vaulting over the fence that separated park from back yard. The back yard was crossed in just a few short steps, and Dean watched through the binoculars as the thing scaled the rose trellis in a few easy movements to perch impossibly just outside Shilo's window.

Dean shoved the binoculars at Sam and picked up his shotgun. Something bad was going on here and he didn't intend on letting Claire Wendell die for it. The bad guy was here, supernatural in origin, and a headshot was a sure fire way to kill most things with bodies.

The brothers abandoned their post at the tree line and swiftly and quietly made their way through the park. They were inches away from the fence and a clear shot when the window suddenly opened from the inside.

Shilo was framed in the window, one side of her face illuminated by the light from her lamp. She didn't look unhappy, let alone surprised, to see the thing outside her window. "Graverobber."

"You locked the window," the creature - the 'graverobber' - noted, his voice surprisingly pleasant.

"Carol locked the window," Shilo corrected. She sighed.

Dean was already aiming his shotgun. Being on the opposite side of the fence was not opportune, but it did provide some cover just on the off chance that he missed.

"A locked window won't help you. It's happening," the Graverobber said, "I can taste the spirit leaking out all over town, Shy."

Sam's hand shot out and knocked Dean's shotgun just as his finger squeezed the trigger. Buckshot blasted into the fence, startling both creature and girl. "What the hell did you do that for?" Dean demanded, sparing just a split second to glare at Sam.

The element of surprise was gone and the creature jumped down from its precarious perch on the rose trellis, hitting the ground hard in booted feet. A light turned on somewhere on the other side of the house and a muffled female voice called something out.

"Nothing!" Shilo called back over her shoulder, swinging one leg over the windowsill and obviously about to attempt to climb down, "nothing, Carol! I just tripped." The voice said something else too muffled to make out from a distance. "I will, I'm sorry."

Dean cocked his shotgun and took aim again, the muzzle of his gun pointed squarely towards the Graverobber's chest.

"Dean!" Sam protested, as loud as he dared.

"What?"

"I don't think he's our problem."

"He's dead and he's stalking little girls. What part of that is not our problem?"

"How about," Shilo interjected, clinging to the rose trellis outside her window and gingerly feeling for a foothold with one delicate bare foot, "the part where you're totally wrong and both lying, trespassing assholes shooting at my friend? Ouch!"

The Graverobber shook his head, an expression on his face that neither Winchester had ever seen on a ghoul. He turned away from the brothers and ascended the rose trellis to grab Shilo around the waist and hoist her over one shoulder. "Stop before you hurt yourself," he told her patiently. "It's only a shotgun."

"Only a shotgun?" Shilo repeated incredulously, not seeming at all upset that she'd just been thrown over a monster's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "I'd like to see you recover from buckshot to the face, you jerk." She used how she was slung over his shoulder to her advantage and thrust her knee square into his chest - which didn't seem to inconvenience him very much.

The Graverobber dropped to the ground again and set Shilo down on her feet in the grass. "We seem to be in the midst of a grave misunderstanding," he said dryly, glancing at the hunters on the other side of the fence.

"Was... that a pun?" Sam asked.

Standing in bare feet on the grass wearing nothing but a nightgown and a glare, Shilo looked very different from the demure, perfectly put together girl they'd spoken to earlier. Her glare was venomous. "You're not from the CDC," she stated, "and you're not cops or social workers."

"No, we're not," Sam admitted while Dean kept a wary eye on the Graverobber, "we're hunters. We're here about the girls who keep getting sick for no reason and dying. If we know what's causing it then we can stop it."

Shilo's glare was wiped from her face. "Oh."

"Maybe this isn't the best place for this conversation," the Graverobber suggested.

"I'll get my coat," Shilo said and turned back towards the trellis only to be stopped by the Graverobber's arm.

"I'll get your coat, Shy." The creature didn't wait for an answer or protest before he scaled the trellis and slipped in through Shilo's open window. There was an awkward sort of silence for a few moments, then Shilo's coat dropped from the window and straight onto her head, followed by a pair of ballet flats that fell to the grass in front of her.

Five minutes later Sam and Dean were following Shilo and the Graverobber through the woods and wondering what exactly they'd gotten themselves into.

"Where exactly are we going?" Dean asked, still carrying his shotgun and prepared to use it if he had to. "And how do we know we can trust you?"

"You're not looking very trustworthy yourselves," Shilo pointed out over her shoulder, picking her way delicately over sticks and sharp stones with the Graverobber's help. "You showed up with guns, you've obviously been watching the house, you came to talk to me at school using fake federal IDs..."

Dean looked at Sam, only to see his brother looking back at him, eyebrows raised. Shilo had a point. "Well you looked pretty darn suspicious, kid. And this could still be a trap."

"You have trust issues," Shilo retorted.

For the moment Dean was going to shut up and pretend he didn't just get verbally one-upped by a teenage girl in a nightgown.

The trees began to clear soon afterwards to reveal what, at first glance, looked like a stone shed or outhouse. Only when they got close enough to view the crumbling tombstones in haphazard rows did it become obvious that the building was actually a tomb.

"Yours?" Dean asked, throwing the graverobber-creature a sceptical look.

The Graverobber smiled. "I'm borrowing it. For now."

The inside of the tomb was dry and smelled vaguely of open graves and kerosene. A hurricane lamp provided light enough to see the layer of pine bracken blanketing the floor, and an errant pile of bones in a corner that looked suspiciously like they had once belonged to a hand. The stone casket in the middle of the small room was cracked and crumbling, but still largely in one piece. Shilo found herself a seat perched on the edge of it, wrapping her coat tighter around her body.

"So..." Sam started. "Do you mind if you go first?"

Shilo looked at the Graverobber. He placed a hand on her shoulder. "I met Shilo when she was twelve," he said plainly, "five months before her father poisoned her into a coma."

"It was Munchausen's by proxy," Shilo explained, twisting her hands together even as her face stayed blank. "I looked it up. He was a doctor - my doctor - at the hospital in my home town. He was respected and admired, a successful and wealthy man with a sickly daughter. He used to put things in my food, my drink, sometimes even through my IV. As long as I stayed sick he stayed the respected man with the tragic family burden. When I met Graverobber he started helping me, telling me ways to trick my dad into thinking I'd eaten things when I hadn't. I started getting better, a lot better..."

"Until Shilo was injected with a chemical cocktail that put her into a coma." The bland statement came from the Graverobber. Totally unrepentant, as most creatures are, he continued frankly; "I killed Nathan Wallace. Without the good doctor around to hinder her progress, Shilo made a full recovery."

Sam frowned. "That doesn't explain what happened to those other girls."

"No, it does." Shilo gripped the edge of her coat, knuckles turning white. "My dad's dead and he can't get to me. That's the whole point."

The Graverobber nodded in confirmation. "Nathan lingers. He can't touch Shilo, so he replicates his last living deeds on girls with similar features."

"Why can't he touch Shilo?" Sam asked.

The Graverobber grinned, exposing teeth just this side of yellow. "I would eat him if he tried."

"So we find whatever is tying Nathan Wallace to this world and we burn it," Dean said, frowning. "Problem solved."

"It can't be his body," Sam added, "or he wouldn't be following you."

"He was cremated," Shilo told them. "I know that's not helpful."

"Do you have anything of his? Anything he owned while he was alive?"

Shilo shook her head. "I only kept the things that belonged to my mother. Just a cameo locket, and my rabbit."

"I've looked," the Graverobber explained, "but I can only find spirits when they're attached to bodies. It's what I eat."

Sam and Dean looked at each other. After a long pause Sam spoke up hesitantly; "There are some exorcism rituals... designed to separate a ghost from its attachment to one person. If Nathan is fixated on you, actually attached to you, an exorcism might just get rid of him."

"Then we have to do that," Shilo said firmly. Then, much less confidently; "Please. I don't want anyone else to die because of my dad."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes**: This has been a Boxes production, brought to you by the letters O, M, and G. Thankyou to everyone who read, even if it turned out you didn't enjoy it.

Yes. This is the last chapter.

-

* * *

They agreed to try the exorcism at the brothers' motel room. After going over the facts it seemed like the only place in the entire town that they might get away with performing a freaky-looking ritual and not have anyone call the cops. Graverobber's tomb was out of the question - too small, too much interference, too far away from emergency services if something went horribly, terribly wrong. The woods themselves were both too dangerously open and too filled with trees that could easily become giant standing twigs of death.

The motel was an enclosed space, but not too small. It was far enough on the outskirts of town that it was private, but close enough that an impromptu trip to the hospital wouldn't be all that difficult. The only problem was getting Shilo there, and she had the solution within minutes.

"I'll ask a girl at school to cover for me, bribe her if I have to, and then tell Carol I'm going over to her place for dinner. If Carol finds out afterwards I'll just tell her I was meeting a guy." Shilo shrugged. "It's sort of accurate, and it's not like she can do much more than ground me."

"And you?" Dean asked, looking at the Graverobber.

The creature shrugged its shoulders under the huge furry coat it was wearing. "I'll watch from the woods. It will be easier for Shilo to sneak into a motel alone."

Put like that the whole sneaking into a motel thing sounded creepy. Dean had to wonder if the Graverobber had made it sound that way on purpose.

-

* * *

-

The exorcism was spelled out neatly (or as neatly as it got) in the second half of John Winchester's journal. For ease's sake Sam spent a few minutes of the afternoon copying it out onto another sheet of paper just to make sure that their father's handwriting wouldn't be an impediment.

Shilo turned up at six in the evening, schoolbag in hand, She was wearing a cameo at her throat, the locket she'd mentioned as having belonged to her mother. She dumped her schoolbag onto the end of one of the cheap motel beds and looked expectantly at the brothers.

"Ok, so... now what?"

Sam cleared his throat. He showed her the sheet of paper with the exorcism written on it. "Ok, we're going to do this in three parts. The first part is going to draw out the ghost and force it to show itself, the second part here will trap it, and the third part forces it to break the connection with you and with nothing to tie it here on earth that should cause it to dissipate completely."

"Great," Shilo sounded more resigned than enthused. "I guess we should get this over with."

Lines were drawn in chalk over the carpet, a basic protection circle and something the Winchesters rarely had use for. Normally it was only themselves looking to take on a homicidal spirit, and with more time to prepare than the few seconds it took to lay salt they might as well do this right.

Shilo stood in the middle of the circle, hands clasped in front of her. She was looking down at the floor, not that either of them could blame her. She didn't look up until Sam coughed politely.

"We're ready to go. Just stay in the circle and you'll be fine."

Shilo nodded and stood up just a little straighter in the chalk circle. Sam began the exorcism, pronouncing the less familiar lines with careful precision. Nothing happened. In fact, Sam got through all three sections without so much as an ectoplasmic twitch.

Dean lowered the salt-loaded shotgun he'd been carrying. "Well that was a waste of time."

"I concur." The voice came from behind them, mellow and pleasant, the sort of reassuring voice that most people found soothing. "I don't understand what this ridiculous farce was meant to achieve."

Shilo froze, her shoulders suddenly tense. She turned around very slowly. "Dad."

Dean had the gun aimed at the spectre within the space it took to breathe. For a moment he was shocked by the ghost's appearance. So far all of the ghosts he'd ever been witness to had given some indication of being dead. Nathan Wallace was sitting on the edge of the bed looking practically alive, and posed like a disapproving parent who'd just caught his very young children doing something a little naughty.

Nathan shook his head. "Shilo, I thought I raised you better than this."

"You raised me in a cage," Shilo retorted, "and pumped me full of chemicals. This is better."

"Uh, excuse me, sir?" Sam piped up, not entirely sure what was going on just now or what the best way to handle it was. "If you're not attached to Shilo herself how are you here?"

"When I was alive I had to find some way of keeping track of her," Nathan explained patiently, even smiling. He reached out and patted the plush rabbit that had spilled from Shilo's bag and onto the bed. "I put a GPS tracker in her favourite toy to make sure I always knew where she was. I wouldn't want my little girl getting hurt."

"You put a tracker in my rabbit!?"

The ghost nodded. "It's been there since you were ten years old. This way I can always look after you."

"We need that rabbit," Dean told Sam, feeling stupid just for saying it.

Sam nodded and took just one step to the right and towards the bed before the ghost's attention was on him. Sam braced himself for the inevitable slamming force that would shove him across the room... but it didn't come. "Please," the ghost said, "this is between me and my daughter. I would appreciate it if you stayed out of our business."

"Making little girls sick is not taking care of your daughter."

"I am not the problem." Nathan stood, drawing up to a full height that was admittedly not very impressive. "It's that grave robbing fiend that's the problem. He took my Shilo from me, he's to blame."

Shilo scoffed. "You're totally delusional!"

"I'm a respected doctor, a good man. The grave robber isn't even human. He's a soulless, scum-sucking fiend."

"Oh my God. Are you trying to parent me?" Shilo glared at the ghost with all of the gloom and anger contained within her adolescent body. "Well you can forget it, dad. I'm taking my rabbit, and my Graverobber, and going home." Shilo snatched the rabbit from the bed and held it protectively in her arms - ruining any sneaky plans the Winchesters might have had about setting fire to it while neither ghost nor girl was watching.

"Shilo, please."

The girl was already out the door. Barely a moment later the ghost of Nathan Wallace burst into flames and disappeared. Sam turned to look at Dean, pretty sure that he was wearing the exact same look of confusion as his brother. "Uh..."

"Dude," Dean summed it up pretty succinctly, "what just happened?"

A sudden coughing fit from outside had both brothers on the move, only to stop just outside the doorway no less dumbfounded than before. The Graverobber was doubled-up in the parking lot, Shilo's massacred rabbit clutched in one enormous gray hand while the girl herself rubbed his back soothingly.

"Seriously." Dean might have been staring. "What. The hell."

-

* * *

-

Claire Wendell's recovery was as sudden and unexplained as her illness. By the time her blood work finally got back from the lab she was already fit enough to go home, leaving the hospital staff to be baffled by her test results. No infections, no chemical imbalances. As far as the paperwork was concerned Claire was, and always had been, a perfectly healthy preteen girl.

The symptoms were gone, and as far as anyone could tell so was the ghost.

Sam and Dean spent a good half a day assuring people that everything was fine, it was all taken care of, false alarm, and that the CDC had no further business in the town of Meadow Creek.

Gear packed up, the brothers were just about ready to leave town.

"There's just one thing I don't get," Sam admitted, watching the retro-scenic landscape of the town pass by through the windshield.

"What's that?"

"If all Nathan's ghost wanted to do was take care of Shilo in its own sick, twisted way - why would he target other girls instead of just going after her?"

"Dude." Dean glanced over at his brother, one eyebrow raised. "That's what you're brooding over? You don't want to know why we've never heard of a ghost-eating ghoul before, or why a ghost-eating ghoul would stalk a teenage girl halfway across the country? Or, hell, why she'd be ok with that? You just want to know why the ghost didn't try to kill his own kid."

"Think about it, Dean." Sam shook his head. "Shilo carried him around in that rabbit for years and he never touched her, he just went after girls who looked like her. Why would he do that, if Shilo was right there? Why would he make the other girls sick but leave her alone?"

Dean had no answer for that, and judging by Sam's silence neither did he.

-

* * *

-

[**Between Three and Four Years Ago**]

"It's a big deal," Graverobber explained, placing the small ceramic heart into Shilo's palm. He wrapped her hand in his, closing her fingers over the cold porcelain. Shilo could feel her skin ripple, and a sudden prickle of icy coldness. When she opened her hand again the heart was gone, her palm red and tender.

"Now," the Graverobber continued, soothing her palm with gentle strokes of his cool fingers, "I'll always know where you are."

"So when they do send me away you'll know where I am. You can come with me."

"Would you like that?"

"I have your heart now," Shilo pointed out as she smiled at him, "it's a bit late to change your mind."

"So you're stuck with me, kid." The creature grinned. "You've got a graverobber sitting square in your chest."

With her father dead and gone, her 'condition' miraculously taking a turn towards sudden health, and her future in the foster care system... Shilo didn't see that as a bad thing.


End file.
